O William Dear! O William Dear!
My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
Is broken into pieces.
Tuesday 20th August was an unsettling day.
It started all right. Charles felt at one with Anna and at one with the world. She left the flat at about half-past nine. (Michael Vanderzee was champing at the bit to get his workshop sessions restarted after the layoff caused by the revue’s opening.) Charles had a leisurely breakfast of floury bacon rolls at the Poppin and then, as a token gesture to detective work, he went back to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to see if he could work out the reason for Martin’s visit.
The Gallery was well laid out and should have been interesting, but he was not in the mood for inspecting the faces of people he had never heard of. The whole business of searching for clues and motives was beginning to bore him.
He was gazing at a wax model of William III when he remembered the newspapers. The day after a first night (or at least a first lunch) and he had not yet checked to see if there were any notices. The rest of the portraits could wait. He hurried out under the disapproving glare of the large nosed-faces of Scotland’s heritage.
There was a big newsagents on Princes Street. Rather than behaving logically and starting with just the Guardian, he went mad and bought every available daily. Which meant a great deal of waste paper; So Much Comic… had so far failed to capture the interest of the nationals.
He stood in the street reading and dropped the inadequate newspapers one by one into a litter-bin. Nothing in the Guardian; so much for his conversation at the Fringe Reception. Charles realised he was being naively optimistic to expect to be noticed on the first day of the Festival, particularly with negative advertising.
Only the Glasgow Herald left. He opened it without hope, and on the review page, there it was.
So Much Comic, So Much Blood, Masonic Hall, Lauriston Place. Thomas Hood is now remembered, if at all, for about three poems which recur in anthologies. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to get a broader view of the poet’s work from this enchanting lunch-time show. Charles Paris has compiled a skilful programme from poems and letters, which maintains a fine balance between humour and pathos without ever slipping into sentimentality. He performs the show with the clarity and understatement which are the hallmark of real talent. Do try to catch this. It’s only on for the first week of the Festival and I guarantee more laughs than in most of the late-night revues.
Charles could not control an ebullient smile. What he held in his hands was a good old-fashioned rave.
Thanks to the review and a couple of large Bell’s, he arrived at the Masonic Hall at a quarter to one in high spirits and totally devoid of nerves. He felt confident as he waited in the wings for the lights to go down.
From that point on the day deteriorated. For a start, the show did not go well. A second performance is always difficult, because of the feeling of anticlimax. And the size of the audience did not augur well for the circulation figures of the Glasgow Herald. There were about twenty, apparently under doctor’s orders that laughter was injurious to health. Puns and wisecracks vanished into the spongy void of the hall.
And, to add to that, Frances was in the audience. The woman he had married, to whom he had given the unfortunate name of Frances Paris. He recognised her as soon as the show started from her loyal, and solitary, laughter. When he stopped to consider, it was quite logical that she should be in Edinburgh. She came up most summers to give a couple of her sixth formers a quick cultural immersion. There were two girls sitting with her, one black and one white.
Charles was very fond of Frances, but he wished she was not there. Since he had walked out on her twelve years before, they had remained friendly and he had even gone back to her from time to time. She made no demands on him, but her presence, just when he was feeling secure of his relationship with Anna, was embarrassing.
He tried not to be too off-hand when she came round backstage; he had no desire to hurt her. She looked harassed and was obviously having difficulty controlling her two charges outside the school context. The white girl was dumpy and called Candy; the black girl was splendidly tangible and called Jane; both regarded Edinburgh as an opportunity to be emancipated and meet men.
Husband and wife exchanged Edinburgh addresses and parted amicably with vague intentions to meet up again. The encounter brought a little cloud of depression into Charles’ sunny outlook.
It was not until about half past six that the cloud started to look stormy. The Mary cast had been rehearsing all afternoon, but most of them were released for the evening, because Michael Vanderzee wanted to work on the Mary/Bothwell scenes for an hour until Anna had to go to the revue. After a cabbage supper at Coates Gardens, the actor playing John Knox (nicknamed ‘Opportunity Knox’ by the rest of the cast) suggested a trip to the pub. Darnley, Ruthven and Cardinal Beaton thought it was a good idea. So did the new David Rizzio, Sam Wasserman. Charles decided that he too would like a drink.
In the Haymarket pub, he discovered that student unrest manifests itself in reluctance to be first to the bar, so he bought the round. Without conscious engineering, he found himself alone at a table with Sam.
The author of Mary, Queen of Sots was a young American with fine blond hair, a woffly ginger moustache and black-rimmed round glasses. He wore a thick check lumberjack shirt, the inevitable blue jeans and yellow-laced brown boots. He had arrived in Edinburgh that day, just in time to hear the boom of the one o’clock gun fired from the Castle and become immediately embroiled in one of Michael Vanderzee’s workshops.
‘That was after two solid days’ travelling. I got Mike’s telegram from the Poste Restante in Brindisi, and I just dropped everything and came. I mean, my God. I really care about this show…’
As soon as Sam started speaking, Charles realised why the tete-a-tete had been so easily arranged. Sam Wasserman was a bore, one of those instantly identifiable bores who has the ability to make the most interesting anecdote tedious, who can destroy by endless detail. But as well as qualifying as one of this international type, Sam also demonstrated that refinement of the quality which is peculiar to earnest young American academics. A glaze crept over Charles’ eyes as the monologue continued.
‘… In fact, Mary, Queen of Sots derives directly from the presentation techniques I developed in a show based on the Boston Tea Party for my Master’s thesis at U.S. C…’
‘U.S.C.?’ Charles queried weakly.
‘University of Southern California. I did my Master’s there before coming to Derby. In Drama and Creative Writing. When I say my project was based on the Boston Tea Party, I mean of course loosely based. It concentrated on the ethnico-political problems of the American Indians. Viewed of course from a Socialist standpoint. The central allegorical symbol was the fact that the Boston Tea Party was perpetrated by white men disguised as Indians. White usurping the place of red. Like corpuscles. I used the analogy of leukaemia.’
Charles concentrated and tried to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted. ‘But you come to this show in rather macabre circumstances.’
The nudge was insufficient; Sam needed actual derailment. ‘The macabre is very much an integral part of my writing. And the bizarre. Another image I developed in the U.S.C. show,’ he steamrollered on, ‘was the unusual ability of the Navajo Indians to walk along girders at great height as if they were on the ground. It’s a different spatial concept. I related that to the myopic nature of the social services…’
‘Oh.’ Charles found himself nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car. He made another supreme effort to manhandle Sam off his monologue. ‘What I meant was that Willy Mariello was killed with a knife and that’s why you’re here actually taking part in Mary, Queen of Sots.’
For a moment it seemed to have worked. Sam looked straight at him and was silent for a long time before his continuation showed that Charles had failed. ‘Well, of course, Mary is an entirely different proposition, in spite of certain similarities of technique. And in fact, from an allegorical point of view, it’s very apt that the show should be born in an atmosphere of violence.
‘You see, the basic allegory of Mary, Queen of Sots is the historical parallel. The original Mary’s life was stained with blood. In my version, Mary, Queen of Scots represents Scotland and the natural wealth of her oil resources.’
‘Oh yes,’ Charles mouthed, wilting.
‘Yes,’ said Sam, as if it were a surprising affirmation. ‘Now Mary’s two husbands, Lord Darnley and the Earl of Bothwell, I take to represent England and the good old U.S. of A., the two countries who want to control her wealth. Queen Elizabeth, who ordains her execution, is the Arab states, who hold the real power in oil politics. Neat, huh?’
Charles, suffering from mental indigestion at the thought of this laboured allegory being expounded in Creative Writing, nodded feebly. But he saw a slight chance. ‘Where does David Rizzio fit into this scenario?’
‘David Rizzio represents the ecological lobby who might argue against the exploitation of oil resources in favour of a more medieval economic structure. For that reason, he gets killed off pretty early.’ Sam chuckled at his own intellectual audacity.
It might be a tiny lever to shift the conversation and Charles seized it. ‘But not killed off as early as Willy Mariello was.’
‘No.’
Before Sam had time to relate the death to one of his allegories, Charles pressed on. ‘You must have been pretty cut up to hear about Willy.’
‘Shocked certainly. I mean one is always shocked to hear of a young person’s death; it’s a kind of suspension of continuity. And obviously there was a dramatic element in this particular event.’
‘But you must have felt this more. To lose a friend…’
‘I didn’t know Mariello that well.’
‘I thought it was through you that Willy came to be in this show in the first place.’
‘That’s true, but only indirectly. I suppose the suggestion that he should do the music came from me-I put it up to the D.U.D.S. committee-but that was on the recommendation of someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘A girl involved in the society suggested it. I thought it was a good idea, because, you know, he was a professional musician and into rock music and I, well, I’ve got a kind of basic musical knowledge, but really my talent lies with words. And certainly the settings Mariello did for my lyrics were infinitely superior to anything I could have done. He changed the odd word here and there and I had to pull him up on that, but basically it was great. Besides, I believe very strongly in people working together under a kind of creative umbrella unit.’
‘Why do you think the girl recommended Willy to you?’ Charles asked slowly.
‘Well, like I say, he was very good. And he’d been hanging round the Derby campus for a bit and apparently, after the group he was with split up, he wanted to try something different…’
‘And?’
‘Well, I kind of got the impression that there might be a kind of thing going on between him and this girl. They both played it pretty close to the chest, but I sort of got this feeling that they wouldn’t mind being involved in something together.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, and then asked the question he had been putting off. ‘Who was this girl?’
‘A girl called Anna Duncan. She’s now playing Mary in my show. I don’t know if you know her.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charles, ‘I know her.’
That evening he met James Milne back at Coates Gardens and found the Laird eager for another Dr Watson session. Charles had suddenly become unwilling to pursue the business of detection, but he could not avoid a cosy chat over malt whisky.
Sherlock Holmes was always way ahead of Dr Watson in his deductions, but he rarely actually withheld information from his sidekick. Charles Paris did. There were things he wanted to be sure of, half-formed ideas that could not be shared until they had hardened into facts.
They talked mostly about Martin Warburton. Charles told of his long tracking expeditions and the discovery of Martin’s second identity.
‘But surely that makes him our number one suspect?’
‘I suppose so.’ Charles hoped he sounded convinced.
‘It’s fairly bizarre behaviour.’
‘Yes, I agree. Certainly Martin is in a very strange mental state. He’s all mixed up and he has some violent fantasies. I think he’s probably suffering from overwork-you know, just taken finals-but that doesn’t make him a murderer. His disguise may be for criminal purposes, or it may just be that he needs to escape into another identity.’
‘Hmm. That sounds like psychological claptrap to me.’
‘You don’t subscribe to a psychological approach to crime?’
‘I dare say it’s very useful in certain cases, but I think it’s often used to fog perfectly straightforward issues. Every action has some sort of motive, and I’m sure that Martin Warburton has a real motive for dressing up as someone else.’
‘And you don’t regard an inadequacy in his personality as a real motive?’
‘I regard it as a formula of words. A motive is theft or blackmail, that sort of thing. Revenge even.’
‘But Martin might take on another identity because there’s something in his own that he can’t come to terms with.’
‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’
It was so easy for the Laird, insulated from life in his library, just as he had been insulated with his mother at Glenloan House and insulated in the staffroom at Kilbruce School. Because he had never encountered any unpleasant realities, he assumed they did not exist. Or if they did, they were simple things that could be cut up like sheets of paper, not made of material that frayed and tore and could never be properly divided.
‘But, James, come off it. When we last spoke you were talking of an obsessional killer, someone for whom the Mary, Queen of Scots story had a macabre significance.’
‘I didn’t quite say that.’
‘You were moving in that direction. And an obsessional killer hasn’t got one of your nice neatly defined motives like theft or blackmail or revenge.
‘Yes, he has. The very obsession is the motive. It’s not a sane motive, but it’s real to the murderer.’
‘Therefore you’ve got to understand the psychology of the murderer.’ Charles felt that it was a mild triumph.
‘Yes, but the process is simple. Assume an inverted logic, and the motivation makes sense. You don’t have to delve into inadequacies of personality and compensation and all that humbug.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to agree on this point.’ Charles was beginning to lose the little interest he had in their discussion. His mind was elsewhere, and not enjoying the trip. But he felt he should simulate some concern. ‘So if Martin, say, is an obsessional killer, what do you reckon is the motive for his walking round the city of Edinburgh in disguise?’
‘It must be something to do with the planning of his next crime.’
‘I see.’ Charles tried not to sound contemptuous. ‘So what do you think we should do about it?’
‘I think we should keep a close eye on him.’
‘Yes, fine. I must go.’ He rose with almost rude abruptness. ‘I’ve got to… um… go.’ He could not think of a polite excuse. He could not think of anything except the ordeal ahead of him. The ordeal of seeing Anna.
When it came, it was not really an ordeal. She arrived, flushed and excited after the revue. There had been a B.B.C. producer in the audience who (according to Brian Cassells, who had buttonholed the poor man departing and forced an opinion out of him) had liked Anna’s performance. She was very giggly and charming as she described Brian’s earnest relaying of the news and imagined his clumsy handling of the encounter. Charles warmed to her in spite of himself.
But he felt detached because of the tiny infection of suspicion inside him. He kept wanting to ask her about Willy, to know if they had had an affair and, by doing so, cauterise the wound before it spread to dangerous proportions. But he could not do it. Not when she was so lovely. It would spoil everything.
They drank some port that Anna had bought and giggled into bed. And they made love. As good as ever, tender, synchronised, good. Except that Charles felt he was watching the two of them like a picture on the wall. Immediately after, they switched off the light and Anna, who was exhausted by Mary rehearsals and the revue, slipped easily into sleep.
Charles did not. He felt better for having seen her; his imagination could not run riot while she was actually there. But the doubt remained. He wanted to excise it, cut it out of his mind. The only way to do that was to ask her point-blank. But he knew he couldn’t. Not to her face. He contemplated ringing her up, even ringing her up in a different identity, pretending to be a policeman or… No, that was stupid.
He reasoned with himself. All right, so say she had been having an affair with Willy Mariello. So what? Charles had no particular claim on her and, anyway, he never worried about a woman’s previous lovers; they didn’t concern him. Jealousy over something that was over was pointless. And a lover couldn’t be more over than Willy.
That was the worrying bit. Not that Anna had slept with the Scottish lout, but that he had been murdered. Again Charles reasoned with himself and calmed himself with thoughts that there might be no connection between the two facts. Indeed, they weren’t both definitive facts yet. And they could be investigated.
Yes, a bit of investigation would put his mind at rest. He plumped up his pillow and turned over. Anna’s breathing had a soporific rhythm. But he did not sleep.